Friday, July 08, 2011

Most Meritorious Player 1963 discussion

After the dramatic changes of 1961 and 1962, with expansion in both leagues, in 1963 the Major Leagues went through a rather dull patch.

The baseball season opened on 8 April 1963. Earlier events of note in the year included the release of The Beatles’ first album Please Please Me, the premiere of the manga-based cartoon Astro Boy on Japanese television and Charles De Gaulle’s veto of the United Kingdom’s application to join the “Common Market” (now the European Union). During the season, great political oratory was displayed by Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, while Kennedy turned himself into a pastry in Berlin (“Ich bin ein Berliner”). Meanwhile the folk heroes of Britain’s Great Train Robbery carried out their nefarious deed.

Fans of lesser sports might note that the first NHL draft was held, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame opened.

The season itself did not provide much excitement in the races, as last season’s signs of parity completely disappeared. The Yankees took sole possession of first place on 18 June and never relinquished it, even maintaininng a double-digit lead in games over other AL teams from 21 August onwards. Their closest rivals were the White Sox. The National League was barely more comptetitive. The Dodgers moved ahead of the Cardinals on 2 July, and kept ahead of the Cards and the Giants to the end of the season. The season ended on 6 October, when the Dodgers completed a sweep of the Yankees. Seven weeks later, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in circumstances that eventually gave rise to many hypotheses.

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

The big news: run scoring took a truly massive one-year drop in both leagues. Runs per game had been 4.45 in the AL and 4.52 in the NL in 1962. That dropped to 4.08 in the AL and 3.82 in the NL. The "little dead ball days" were on.

Here are the RA+ pythpat equivalent records for the pitchers mentioned above:

In the AL:

Peters 18-9
Pascual 18-9

Both were excellent hitters, with Peters having 104 OPS+ and +10 RAR, Pascual 68 OPS+ and +7 RAR.

Only Marichal and Jackson out of this group was a passable hitter: OPS+ 23, RAR +3 for Marichal and OPS+ 22, RAR +1 for Jackson. The others were mediocre to bad, with Koufax, as usual, being the worst: OPS+ -39, RAR -8.

Are there other pitchers I should look at besides these?

The two biggest pitching surprises of the year were both in Chicago, Ellsworth and Peters.

I've definitely heard of a lot of those relievers, and maybe I should do equivalent records for Radatz, Perranoski, and Woodeshick. Note how many innings each of them had - and how many decisions.

But the name that caught my immediate attention was Bob Veale. Veale, a reliever?

I looked at how Veale was used. For sure, he wasn't the "fireman", the go-to guy when the chips were down. The closest to that on the Pirates was Al McBean, although Roy Face got more saves. So what was Veale? Here's one item: of his 34 appearances, 17 were for less than one inning, and another 4 were for exactly one inning. So he was a LOOGY!

I decided to go through his 17 appearances of less than one inning to ask who he faced. (I should do that with some of the other appearances as well, but I started with these 17):

My ballot represents a homogenization of various different ratings. This is 1st blush with no adjustments, etc.

1. Willie Mays
2. Hank Aaron and Sandy Koufax (tie)

I see that Aaron had a big year and is preferred by WARP and WS. Milwaukee's chronic (by now) underachievement as a team bothers me, though penalizing Aaron for that is not obviously defensible. Still, I do. And one adjusts for defense even if it is already in the number. As for Koufax, I was a big Koufax fan at the time and I am tempted to bounce Koufax up ahead of Mays but I also remain a WS supporter and WS is pretty emphatic the other way. So, in short, this is obviously the big three, but what final order I don't know yet. All 3 have a case IMO.

4. Dick Groat
5. John Callison

Callison surprises the hell out of me, I'll have to see if it holds up.

6. Elston Howard

This is higher than y'all are gonna have him but, frankly, It's hard to see how his WARP and WS scores aren't better based on his position and numbers. I mean, 7 more RBI and 40 more points of SA than Callison, just for instance. Of course, that's in a different league.

7. Jim Gilliam and Bill White (tie)

How could Bill White not rate ahead of Callison, just eye-balling their real numbers?

in RA+ equivalent record, there's not a big difference, 25-10 versus 23-9. In equivalent FWP, that's 33-31 in favor of Koufax. Koufax was the worse hitter of the two (not that Ellsworth was a good hitter). The WS in Sunnyday's post #9 has them tied.

fra paolo: what are those two columns of numbers in your intro? The first column has Ellsworth ahead 9.8-9.6; the second column has a substantial advantage for Koufax, 7.2-5.2. The DanR Warp quoted in post #3 has a substantial gap, 9.8-7.9.

DL and Sunnyday both talk of Koufax as at least being in the conversation for the top spot; they don't talk that way about Ellsworth.

Baseball Reference gives Koufax 10.8 pitching WAR, -0.9 in OWAR and -0.3 in DWAR for a total of 9.6
For Ellsworth the numbers are 10.3 pitching WAR, -0.2 OWAR and -0.3 DWAR for a total of 9.8

The DWAR numbers are even according to baseball ref so the fact that Dan R doesn't use them isn't a big deal. The batting number contribution is different by 1 run between the two systems so we can focus on the difference in pitching WAR between the two systems.

Rrep is 160 runs for Ellsworth and 151 runs for Koufax. The RAR are 85 and 83 - nearly identical. BBREF gives a little more leverage credit to Ellsworth (1.2 to 1.1). My guess is this boils down to where you set replacement level. I'm not sure why Ellsworth would have a higher Rrep total in fewer innings.

See comment 8. I'd love to be able to edit threads. For that matter I'd love to be able to post threads. Right now I can't even update my password. Every e-mail I send to BBTF is unanswered. The automatic password reset tool doesn't send any e-mail.

See comment 8. I'd love to be able to edit threads. For that matter I'd love to be able to post threads. Right now I can't even update my password. Every e-mail I send to BBTF is unanswered. The automatic password reset tool doesn't send any e-mail.

This one is pretty obvious. Dan R's WARP thinks Callison saved 27 runs on defense and Bill White saved 0 compared to an average defender. WARP believes Bill White was the better hitter in 1963. A half a run is the difference in replacement between 1B and corner OF.

The only things to be seen when you open your eyes are the surprise candidates. Your list has the people who were good for multiple years, the people you expected to be there. Note that 12 of your 15 names are in the HoM, with the exceptions of Maloney, Howard, and Radatz, and those three got discussed. The 1963 surprises include Dick Ellsworth and Johnny Callison.

Boyer instead of Mathews. Didn't Mathews have that problem pretty much every year of his career? People were still saying that Pie Traynor was the all-time best 3B. Although there are all sorts of different numbers above.

Sticking to the formula of one RHP, one LHP, thereby screwing over Ellsworth (LHP).

Bobby Richardson instead of someone or other. OK, Richardson did have 2.5 WAR. But isn't there someone else? (I'm also think that it shouldn't be that hard to top Malzone.)

Tommy Davis instead of Callison. This feels like a leftover from 1962.

This looks to be an interesting election. It should at least be less one sided than 1961 and 1962 where there really wasn't
serious doubt as to who would win. In jumping around looking at a few uber-stats I've seen 3 different players with the highest
number in different systems (Aaron, Mays, and Koufax).
I'm hoping to have gained access to Excel again on my wounded computer so I can make my ballot deeper than the minimum (by the
time it comes to voting).

We're now getting into seasons that I remember pretty well. I was 15 in 1963, and learning more about baseball very quickly. So I can answer some of the questions about perception, if not about uberstats.

Johnny Callison - Callison had the same kind of reputation problems that Frank Robinson had, but at a lower level. At this time, the early 60s, everyone knew that he was a force, but no one remembered his name without prodding. That is, if you mentioned Johnny, everyone knew who he was, but if you asked someone to list the top ten, or even twenty, players in the league, no one would remember to include him. The main reason was that he didn't hit benchmarks. Look at the comparison to Bill White in #21. Bill hit .300. Bill drove in 100 runs. Johnny did neither, but was just as valuable. For one thing, he was a good defensive outfielder. People knew he was good at the time, but didn't know how much that counted in an outfielder. But for another, he just didn't hit benchmarks. Also, his team was often bad, which spilled over. Also, it's possible that Bill White's defense rankings have a problem. At this time, Bill was considered a top glove at first base, similar to Vic Power. This may not be true; he may well have been a replacement level first baseman. But that was not his rep. Most people would have included Bill in a list of top twenty players in the league, citing the averages, RBI, and defense. But Johnny may well have been every bit as good or even better. The point is that it's not some system bug that has Johnny coming up close to these ballots. He was that good, just not that well remembered.

Eddie Mathews - Bill James has this right in his Historical Abstracts. Eddie's main problem was that he had a tremendous career start and then never got better. If anything, he declined. So people underrated him because he was always having a "disappointing" season. It didn't help that his team was the same, always a "disappointment" after 1958. On top of that, the Milwaukee ballpark suppressed homers, so no one really understood how good Eddie was, nor Hank Aaron, either. In a normal ballpark, both players would have had 50-homer seasons, and no one would have underrated either of them. Meanwhile, Ken Boyer came up as a center fielder, ran really well, converted very well to third, drove in lots of runs, was not on the same team as Hank Aaron, played at least as well as his team's superstar, the aging Stan Musial, and the team was never considered a disappointment, even if the Braves were better that year. So Boyer was perceived as a "success" rather than a "disappointment."

I hope that helps in understanding why voters did not agree with modern stats about these two guys. The modern stats are correct. - Brock

Callison was easily the best-known player on the Phillies - certainly in Pittsburgh we all knew who he was, perhaps more than Brock did in Cardinal country. But the Phillies weren't on anyone's radar until 1964 - in that season Callison was going to be the MVP until the team collapsed down the stretch, and might very well have been a unanimous pick (even though Dick Allen was a better player). After that season his national profile was higher, but the Phillies went back to being a mid-pack team, the Dodgers, Giants, and Cardinals jumped back into the top echelon, Callison's power disappeared for reasons unclear (but much discussed and dissected - at one point he took to wearing glasses, which caused a pretty big stir), and he faded quickly from view.

A look at some more pitchers by RA+ equivalent record. The numbers in the parentheses are Fibonacci Win Points for that record. Offense is not included, so comments about offense are extra. Defensive support is not included.

Then I tried an experiment. I charged these relievers with their inherited runners scored, but at the same time increased their IP by an amount proportional to the inherited runners, in a way that should be fair. It's a work in progress; I might be better off cutting both the increased runs and increased innings in half, and I might want to do a little more tinkering. But for the same three relievers, this adjusted version of the equivalent record:

Radatz: 15-5 (21)
Perranoski: 13-8 (14)
Woodeshick: 11-7 (11)

This doesn't do much for Perranoski or Woodeshick, but it propels Radatz forward into being comparable to Peters and Pascual for best in the AL. (Except both Peters and Pascual have offensive advantages over him.)

Mike: do you have any comments on or anything to add to my Veale-as-LOOGY post in #5 above?

Actually, if I had to characterize his usage I'd say it was more like "rule 5 guy". Retrosheet has play-by-play for all but one of his relief outings.

Early in the season Veale did get some high-leverage relief outings, but he didn't handle them all that well, and beginning in June and extending until he entered the rotation in late August he pitched in nothing but *very* low-leverage relief.

A few items, trying to contribute to the effort here. First, my actual formative years were the 1950s, because of my dad. Dad was a gigantic BROWNS fan (I still have his collection of 1922 baseball cards), who intended to start taking me to the occasional ballgame in 1954, when I would have been 6. But the Browns moved, and dad went into a wallow of guilt, taking me to many many Cardinals games and listening to the rest on the radio with me, talking me through how the game was played. My formative impressions of baseball were as a kid listening to my dad and Haray Caray, and playing Cadaco's All-Star Baseball, which I started playing in 1956. By the 1960s, I was seriously questioning Haray Caray, which isn't exactly "formative", but which did lead to things like my knowledge of the futility of Joe Cuningham's attempts to play the outfield in the late 1950s. That is, my timeline as a fan probably started a bit earlier and harder than most, because of my dad's guilt.

Bob Veale, IMO, should be treated as a starter with a short season, like Billy Hoeft earlier. He pitched to almost twice as many batters as a starter than as a reliever. His value is almost all as a starter. All of what Mike says is very true, and one of the things that contributed to them was the fact that Veale was only in his second partial season. The team did not know for sure what it had there, and what was worse, he was a prototypical 1060s kid pitcher (although a bit old for a "kid"). He threw very hard but could not find the strike zone with a GPS. My opinion is that his season went through three phases: 1) throws hard, hard to hit, good reliever in leverage situations, 2) people learn to take his pitches because he lacks control, he stops producing well and is reduced to low leverage, 3) is tried as a starter late in the year, and comes alive, finding his role.

I took a quick look at Callison's career, and found a couple of things to add to what has already been said. First, Johnny's career start is almost exactly coincidental with Gene Mauch taking over the manager's spot on the team. Mauch's managerial style was not exactly favorable to people driving in 100 runs. He bunted, stole and hit and run too much, giving up too many of his leadoff men's on-base trips. Also, Tony Taylor was, I think, the leadoff man in question, and Tony didn't get on base that much, although he ran well. Third, Mike is UNQUESTIONABLY right about Callison and the 1964 MVP. People were just talking about it as if it were a done deal until the Phils didn't win. I remember that very distinctly, because, of course, I was following the 1964 pennant race with some fervor. Fourth, regarding benchmarks, I noticed that, in this here 1963 year, Callison suffered even more than usual from benchmark failure. The other two Phillie outfielders, Wes Covington and Tony Gonzalez, both just hit over .300, although Covington had to be platooned (with Don Demeter, I think) to do it. Johnny didn't. Johnny did lead the team in homers by a serious margin, but did not produce the hundred RBI. So, benchmarks hurt Johnny's rep in 1963 even more than they usually did. He was the best outfielder on his own team (if you adjust for Covington's platooning), but was probably perceived as the weakest, because his thing was power, and he didn't drive in a hundred, and he wasn't the center fielder (I am not at all certain that Tony Gonzalez was a better glove, but Mauch was). And fifth, Johnny may have been hurt by, essentially, being the successor to Del Ennis as the Phily power source. Ennis had driven in 100 runs regularly, but never played for Mauch. Callison was Del's successor as the Phils' RBI guy, but he did not do what Del had done. (One way you can verify my "formative" years is that I remember Ennis as a Phil rather than as a Cardinal.) - Brock

My earliest memories of baseball predate these 1st few MMP years a bit. Growing up in MN before the Twins, the Milwaukee Braves were the home team. My local radio station was on the Braves network. I stayed up late to hear Harvey Haddix' gem, my parents not realizing that my radio was still on very very low. But the '57 World Series came 1st and most of the slightly older kids in the neighborhood were all abuzz. I didn't understand what was going on fully, but my contrary nature had already started to emerge. If everybody else was cheering for Milwaukee, I would cheer for the Yankees. Not knowing a damn thing about the Damn Yankees, of course. But my infatuation with the Yankees was destroyed by 1) the coming of the Twins, a real home team, and 2) the collapse of '65.

But I was a BIG Mickey Mantle fan and remain so to this day. Some Internet site recently ranked "the greatest Yankees" ( part of the sanctification of Jeter who came in #6, I think), and they had DiMaggio ahead of Mantle. This defies reason and justice and anything this side of mindlessness.

Those were the days of real heroes. We didn't know that some of these guys was bums. Mantle. Arnie Palmer. Jim Brown. Wilt Chamberlain. Sandy Koufax. Paul Hornung. Rafer Johnson. Cassius Clay. Elgin Baylor. The Big O. Mays and Aaron and Frank Robinson. And in my little world Killebrew and Pascual and Allison (before Oliva), Tarkenton, Sandy Stephens, Bobby Bell, Carl Eller, the Miracle on Ice (the real Miracle on Ice, mind you, circa 1960) with Gopher baseball and hockey all-American Jack McCartan in goal.

Actually my infatuation with the Yankees (as opposed to the Mick himself) must not have been that strong because I cheered Bill Mazeroski's HR in 1960. Who could not? That was too exciting. And I had even cheered Hoyt Wilhelm's no-hit job on the Yankees on TGOTW in 1958 (?). So I wasn't that bigofa Yankee fan, but make no mistake I was surely not a Braves fan though I understood that Aaron and Mathews and especially Spahn were players to admire. But I also admired Roger Maris (practically a Minnesotan) and I cheered the Yankees in the '61, '62, '63 (!) and '64 Series. You have no idea today, by the way, how bigofa shock the Dodgers sweep in '63 was. The Yankees was invincible right up to the end of game 4 and by then they couldn't have been more out of it. The fall from dynasty to decrepitude came in a period of about 30 minutes that day. I cheered the Yankees against the Cards in '64 but nobody had any confidence that they would win. And though everybody picked 'em to win the '65 pennant (nobody could remember anybody else ever doing so!), still nobody was surprised when they collapsed.

Nor were Minnesotans surprised when it was the Twins who filled in for 'em. The surprises were collapsing in '66, losing to the Red Sox on the final day of '67, and the '69 Orioles sweep. By '70 another O's sweep was no surprise. And by '71 and '72 everybody knew that the Twins' great run was over, that Calvin Griffith's lack of $$$ was the kiss of death in the new game of baseball. The only surprise looking back was that the great run hadn't produced a world championship and more than 1 AL pennant. Of course, whatever the Twins had done right, the Orioles had done better.

At this point, I have Koufax, Mays, Aaron, and Ellsworth far ahead of anyone else, forming a tight group for the top ballot spot. Without postseason credit, Aaron is first, followed by Ellsworth, Koufax, and Mays, with 0.8 WAR separating top from bottom. But Koufax was a monster in the postseason; when you give him credit for that, he vaults into the #1 spot, far ahead of Aaron. I feel that anyone giving postseason credit should have Koufax at #1, unless you have a dramatically different valuation of position players relative to pitchers. Even then...Koufax had a 1.85 FIP that year, in 311 innings. I know, he was pitching off a gigantic mound in cavernous Dodger Stadium, but still, those are dominant pitching numbers.

I haven't had time yet to put together my uber systems chart (still have to download this year's data from BR, Fangraphs and BP), but I can say that I'm skeptical of Koufax in the #1 slot. Yes, he had a great pitching year, but he was one of the worst hitting pitchers in the majors, and while pitcher fielding can be difficult to measure, he doesn't seem to have been very good at that either. I'm not sure rWAR penalizes him enough for those issues. I'll have to see what the other systems say.

I'm not sure that WPA is the best tool to use in evaluating starting pitchers. Using a .420 replacement level, I've determined that Koufax accumulated 0.9 WAR in the 1963 World Series. Part of the discrepancy between WAR and WPA might result from the first game, which the Dodgers essentially put out of reach with 4 runs in the top of the second. Anyway, with some more reflection, I think I'll backtrack on "far ahead"––Koufax is ahead of Aaron, but without putting extra weight on the postseason games, he's not way ahead of Aaron. However, I do believe that placing extra weight on World Series contributions is justified. After all, the ultimate goal of every season is to win the championship, and winning a World Series game is far more helpful to this goal than winning a regular season game.

Koufax also does well in DanR's WARP and BP WARP. He isn't the clear #1 in either of these systems (unless BP has already included pitcher hitting, which I doubt based on the gap between Koufax and Mays). But he is right there in the conversation for #1, and a significant postseason bonus would allow him to rise to the top.

Nate, what do Koufax's fielding numbers look like? I currently don't account for pitcher fielding in my system, but this is an oversight that I should correct. I think that rWAR does an adequate job accounting for pitcher hitting, however.

Does pitcher fielding matter? It does if you're using any version of FIP or DIPS pitching metrics. But if your system is primarily based on ERA+ or RA+ (especially RA+), then there's no reason to apply any correction - the pitcher's own defense is already included in that. If you start from ERA or RA, then there is cause to correct for the fielding of everyone else on the team other than the pitcher.

But it's also true that if you start with ERA or RA, then the pitcher's own hitting needs to be added or subtracted from that. And it does matter that Koufax was a bad hitter. As for his ranking among pitchers: the only one close to him was Ellsworth, and Ellsworth has his own offensive difficulties. My own opinion is that the hitting differences between Koufax/Ellsworth on the one hand and Peters/Marichal on the other hand are not large enough (even though they're about as large as possible) to bridge over that much difference in the pitching value.

If you start from ERA or RA, then there is cause to correct for the fielding of everyone else on the team other than the pitcher.

rWAR corrects for the fielding of the entire team, using a blanket adjustment for each pitcher. Since TZ doesn't include pitcher fielding, I think that means it's NOT mistakenly removing the effects of pitcher fielding. So it looks like I don't actually have to apply an additional adjustment for pitcher fielding.

Is that appropriate for a postseason series? There are only 2 teams left. Rosters are set. I've often had trouble figuring out exactly how much postseason credit to give because replacement value doesn't make sense any more. There is no "theoretical team of replacement level players" in the World Series.

I like using WPA to determine how much each player contributed to a postseason win but I dislike the flaws in WPA (no defensive credit is #1).

If Koufax was injured for the series, the Dodgers would replace him with, essentially, the same replacement-level player that they would use during the season (the swingman/fifth starter). In fact, the Dodgers' postseason options would be more limited than their regular season options, since they couldn't trade for another pitcher. It's possible that replacement value should be set higher because the swingman on a pennant-winning team is better than the average swingman. However, this consideration should be at least partially offset by the higher quality of play in the World Series. Koufax wasn't facing an average NL team. He was facing the Yankees, which in theory should depress his stats somewhat.

I like using WPA to determine how much each player contributed to a postseason win but I dislike the flaws in WPA (no defensive credit is #1).

I recalculated Koufax's WAR with a .500 replacement level, mirroring WPA, and came up with 0.7 WAR, still slightly more than Koufax's 0.634 WPA. If you're set on a .500 replacement level, this version of WAR is probably superior to WPA, simply because it removes the effects of low-leverage situations that aren't the pitcher's fault (i.e. blowouts).

That's a start but Koufax was facing the Yankees (who scored 4.4 runs a game or 10% above MLB average) and played the games in Yankee and Dodger Stadiums. Yankee Stadium was a fairly neutral environment but nobody scored in Dodger Stadium (park factor 93).

I really wish someone would just do this work for every postseason (start with a .500 replacement level, calculate WAR using the opponent's run expectation, adjust for ballpark) so I could steal it.

Going back to your original point - the Dodgers probably would have replaced Koufax with Drysdale in games 1 and 4, then used Podres in game 2 and Miller or Richert in Game 3. The chaining effects there suggest that .500 isn't a bad estimate.

I just noticed the Dodgers used 4 pitchers in the 1963 World Series. They got all but 2 outs from their starting pitchers. Different ballgame back then.

DL - I have no objections to the schedule, but the period 8/1 - 8/10 is unusually bad for me. I'll hold off as long as I can, but I may have to post my FINAL ballot here, because I may have to do that before the actual ballot thread opens. I hope you don't mind transferring my ballot from one thread to the other. I will, of course, put up a prelim first, here. - Brock

DL/56:
Using a .500 replacement level, and adjusting for the Yankees' RS and the park factors of Dodger and Yankee Stadium, I estimate that Koufax accumulated 0.74 WAR in the 1963 World Series.

I've also been estimating position player WAR (based on their offensive contributions, and a pro-rated portion of their seasonal defensive contributions); I'll post these estimates for notable candidates when I get to them.

Since the advent of the DH rule, AL starting pitchers haven't batted at all, which cuts down the population. And since the current bullpen regime came in around 1990, NL starting pitchers don't see that many 3rd PA in a game - so for them, their hitting has a lower impact than in years past. At that reduced number of PA, it takes a longer time to build up any particular representation. Even so: can you think of any 80's/90's/00's pitchers whose batting "skill" descended to the early 60's depths of Koufax, Chance, and Aguirre?

I wonder if they should have awarded two (or three) MVP awards to the NL players and none to the AL.

:)

I wonder if anyone will have a ballot with 10 NLers. I doubt that I will, but an inferior league with nobody really rocking it all-around (Howard an ok MVP choice, excellent player, but he was no Piazza or Berra really, and nobody above 150 OPS+).

Hi. It's Brock Hanke. Here's my (very) prelim. If I don't post anything else up here by Aug. 10, this should count as my final. But I hope to do more analysis before then. This isn't the most sure prelim I've ever put together.

1. Hank Aaron
2. Sandy Koufax - he had a fine WS, and I might ship him to the top. I tend to count WS for less in one season than I do for whole careers, because so few guys get a chance in one season.
3. Willie Mays
4. Dick Ellsworth
5. Eddie Mathews - his lead in WAR over the next best third baseman is 8.3 - 5.1 = 3.2. That's huge.
6. Dick Groat - his WAR lead over the next best shortstop is 6.4 - 4.3 = 2.1. That's really big, if not huge.
7. Johnny Callison - A lot depends on Bob Allison's defense, which I haven't looked at in detail yet.
8. Camilo Pascual - Hot bat.
9. Junior Gilliam - his lead over the next best second baseman is 5.0 - 4.0 = 1.0 That's big, if not really big. He gets versatility points from me because they count as "on the field" contributions as I interpret the phrase. Gets a little WS credit, but not like Tommy Davis.
10. Dick Radatz - set in my mind, probably erroneously (Hoyt Wilhelm) as the first "one-pitch" closer. He got higher leverage innings because he could not be pushed too far into the game, or the other team would catch up to the heater.
11. Bob Allison - holding his place pending later analysis.
12. Vada Pinson - same as Allison.

Here's my early prelim ballot.
I have not applied any league adjustment or catcher bonus yet, and I'm missing numbers
for some players in one or more of the uber-stat systems I use...
But this is what I've got SO FAR:

Here's my consideration chart. Less systems than last time. BP seems to have moved more stuff behind their paywall, and I don't think you can download their yearly WARP1 figures anymore (or, at least, I couldn't figure out how to do it). And I've been tinkering with my WAA system to fix some issues, but don't have it where I want it, so won't be using it this election.

I've used a 2.69% adjustment for the AL players, which DanR's standard deviations still sees as the stronger league. For the third year in a row, the weaker league fills up the top spots even with that adjustment (to the to tune of the top 6 players this time).

Last year, and in '61 as well, DanR posted updated WARP1 data for selected pitchers to the discussion thread. See post 45 in the '62 thread. That's what I'd be looking for this year, if he has time to compute and post it. Is the WARP2 data you listed from his older spreadsheet? If so, I believe he's said that's shaky (and is why he posted updated data to the threads), so I personally wouldn't be inclined to use that.

DanG/26 gives BP's WARP1 and WARP3 for selected top players, so I think you should be able to incorporate it into your rankings.

I'll take a look at incorporating them, though I'll need to change my script a bit, as it's not set up to handle partial WARP1 data from BP. I might have new rankings this weekend, depending on how busy I am.

I've also been giving thought to Koufax's defense, to try and quantify my earlier statement that his defense wasn't great, and I'm having a hard time supporting the claim. Palmer's FR hates his defense this year, but after some contemplation I just don't trust that formula, so I've decided not to use it. Koufax's assists are on the low side for someone with his amount of innings, and his POs are really low, which is why FR rates him so low, but it's hard to separate that from opportunities for a pitcher (i.e. groundball vs flyball pitchers). Michael Humphreys proposes adding both a pitcher's assists and all infield flies to FIP/DIPS style metrics to get, well, not the pitcher's defense per se, but a fuller picture of value (since groundball pitchers get more assists while flyball pitchers more infield flies, which are almost always automatic outs), and that's intriguing, but I haven't had time to calculate that for '63 and see where Koufax stands.

I reran Nate's numbers for the top 3 candidates only, giving Koufax a 0.9 WAR or 3 WSAB postseason bonus (since 1 win = 3 win shares). Koufax and Mays both came in at a rounded 24 WSAB, so I gave them each 2.5 points rather than breaking the tie. Koufax comes out 1st, at 1.38, followed by Mays at 2.08 and Aaron at 2.17.

I reran Nate's numbers plus BP WARP for the top 3 candidates only, but I also gave Koufax postseason credit. Giving Koufax a 0.9 WAR or 3 WSAB postseason bonus (since 1 win = 3 win shares), Koufax comes out 1st at 1.38, followed by Mays at 2.08 and Aaron at 2.17 (Koufax and Mays both came in at a rounded 24 WSAB, so I gave them each 2.5 points rather than breaking the tie). If I gave Koufax the more conservative postseason bonus of 0.7 WAR (2 WSAB) advocated by DL, in which replacement level is set at .500, Koufax still comes in 1st, at 1.50, followed by Mays at 2 and Aaron at 2.17. Some of this difference in rankings is attributable to the addition of BP WARP, which hates Mays and is favorable to Koufax (he comes in tied for 1st in the regular season--I don't think BP includes pitcher hitting, so I docked Koufax 1.2 wins, his batting WAR total).

Also, the one system that puts Koufax in a clear tier below Aaron and Mays--WSAB--has consistently lower values for pitchers than for hitters. Win Shares values for pitchers are lower than those for hitters; I haven't seen any such comparison with WSAB, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same were true. In 1963, WSAB puts Koufax and Ellsworth 3 and 4, consistent with their consensus rank. But every other pitcher has a significantly lower WSAB rank than consensus rank:

I am likely to post a ballot thread today, because I will lose Internet at home for a few days when I move house. However, the voting will still close on 10 August, as declared by DL above in [57].

My home internet access was shut down a little bit earlier than I thought, so I couldn't post the ballot thread as promised. I currently am at the university, and will post the ballot thread shortly, just to be on the safe side, as I can't gurantee I'll be on campus on 1 August, which is a holiday here in Ontario. I ought to be online from home by the time the results are due to be published.

I've just been digging into starting pitching numbers a bit, and it seems to me that we may be systematically lowballing starting pitchers, perhaps by neglecting their ability to create their own context.

Let's take Koufax's 1963. He gave up 68 runs in 311 innings. TotalZone finds that his fielders cost him 5 runs, so he would have only surrendered 63 with average defensive support. He had a 91 park factor, so in a neutral environment with neutral fielders he'd have allowed 69 runs. He appeared in 40 games, meaning there were 48 innings in his games not pitched by him. Fill those in at the league average of .425 runs per inning and you get 20 more runs, for a total of 89. The 1963 NL scored 3.81 runs per game, so he should have gotten 152 runs of support. 152 runs scored and 89 runs allowed in 40 games is a Pythagorean exponent of 1.67, which means his team should have a .710 winning percentage in those 40 games, a record of 28.4-11.6.

A replacement starting pitcher has about a .390 winning percentage. If we plug in .390 for 86.6% of the innings and .500 for 13.4% of the innings, then the team with a replacement pitcher in Koufax's innings would have a .405 winning percentage, or a record in 40 games of 16.2-23.8.

So that's 12.2 wins above replacement before addressing his hitting--significantly above the 10.8 he is given by baseball-reference WAR (and that's giving him credit for 1.1 leverage, which I'm not). By contrast, if he had pitched 1.9 innings in each of the Dodgers' 162 games, he'd only have been 7.8 wins above average (instead of 8.4) and 11.6 wins above replacement (instead of 12.2).

Fill those in at the league average of .425 runs per inning ... which means his team should have a .710 winning percentage in those 40 games, a record of 28.4-11.6.

In my post #1 at the top of the page, I said 25-10, or to put another digit on it, 24.7-9.8. I didn't have any corrections for team defense. If I applied the same 5 run correction that you did - give him 63 runs allowed instead of 68 - I'd get a record of 25.5-9.0, which is a pretty substantial swing.

But start there. The difference between your 28.4-11.6 and my 25.5-9.0 is a record of 2.9-2.6. A record of 28.4-11.6 is really quite a bit more impressive than 25.5-9.0, and none of that difference is real, since Koufax did not actually pitch those innings. There are some other, smaller differences in the calculation - I think you meant that additional record to be .500 and not better than .500 - but it's still true that the main difference is that you chose to bulk out his record by covering the innings he did not pitch in his starts. I don't quite understand why you would do that. Why not limit his value to the innings he actually did pitch?

2. I am not crediting him for any innings he didn't pitch. He appeared in 40 games and threw 86.6% of the innings in those games. I calculate that a team with Koufax in 86.6% of innings and league-average pitching in 13.4% of innings would have a .710 winning percentage. By contrast, a team with a .390 pitcher in 86.6% of innings and league-average pitching in 13.4% of innings would have a .405 winning percentage. (.71-.405)*40 = 12.2 wins above replacement.

3. You have to take into account how many games a pitcher appears in to get an accurate accounting of their value. As I said, given the same number of innings and runs, Koufax would have only been 11.6 WAR if he'd thrown 1.9 innings in every game. If he had thrown 34.67 complete games and never appeared in another game, then the team would have had 69 adjusted runs allowed and 3.81*34.67 = 132.1 runs scored, which is a Pythagorean exponent of 1.65 and a winning percentage of .745, minus a .390 replacement pitcher would be (.745-.39)*34.67 = 12.3 WAR. The more concentrated your innings are in fewer games, the more valuable you are.

this should also serve as final unless someone finds a clear error in my ways and I adjust...

1. WILLIE MAYS – Until Willie’s fielding at CF gets less advantageous, Hank will have to do better than a 179-175 OPS+ win while both almost never miss a game.
2. HANK AARON – Led the league in HR, RBI, R, SLG, OPS, OPS+, TB. I love this season. This is a perfect season. This is how great Hank Aaron was. And this is how great Willie Mays was. Glad I’m old enough to have seen them both play.
3. SANDY KOUFAX – Wait, here’s another perfect season, and a nice postseason bonus to boot. I will vote for pitchers No. 1 (though less likely post 1970s). But Mays and Aaron – couldn’t quite pull the trigger. But close.
4. DICK ELLSWORTH – Wow. Koufax would have needed the postseason bonus to beat him, except that Ellsworth only hit .096 himself. Tremendous year, though, and ERA+ leader.
5. ELSTON HOWARD – Huh, didn’t buy this AL MVP until I looked closer. 140 OPS+ in 135 games with a Gold Glove. That works for me.
6. EDDIE MATHEWS - Criminally underrated by history. Lead NL in Walks for 3rd straight season, with 124, and nobody noticed. Led league in OBP, and durable 3B. Top 10 MVP votes? Zero.
7. BOBBY ALLISON – Allison was the best hitter in the league.
8. CAMILO PASCUAL – Best ERA+, IP combo, for me. Only other consideration for him will be 1959, much later in our process.
9. WILLIE MCCOVEY – I know, “just a masher” mostly, but a good one at the first sack in 1963.
10. JUAN MARICHAL – Geesh, another Giant. Very effective and the most durable.

Here's my updated consideration chart. It now includes DanR's pitching numbers (thanks to him) and the BP WARP1 numbers for most of the top contenders (thanks to Dan G). The most notable change is Koufax moving from #3 to #2, and very close to Aaron for the top spot. I've rethought my hesitation on him for the #1 spot, and if I gave a post-season bonus I probably would bump him above Aaron, but I don't.

The post-season is completely irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to determining value. The opportunity to participate in it is out of the control of the individual players, and it's such a small sample size that performance in it is meaningless.

Part of discrepancy between Dan's numbers and BBref's is due to a difference in replacement level. Sean Smith uses .420 for pitchers, while Dan's .390 corresponds to Tango's replacement level, I believe. Repeating Dan's process with a .420 replacement level, Koufax has 11.2 WAR, a lot closer to BBref's 10.8. Just to be clear, I'm not advocating that Dan change his replacement level to .420, since I don't think .420 is any better-supported by the evidence than .390.